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Having recently purchased Sun Microsystems, Oracle has now bought virtualisation specialist Virtual Iron for an unspecified amount. The purchase gives Oracle another server virtualisation solution, including Virtual Iron's management software. In a statement Wim Coekaerts, Oracle Vice President of Linux and Virtualisation Engineering, said "With the addition of Virtual Iron, Oracle expects to enable customers to more dynamically manage their server capacity and optimize their power consumption.

The Swiss Federal Office for Construction and Logistics (Bundesamt für Bauten und Logistik, or BBL) is reported as having purchased Microsoft licenses in the order of 42 million Swiss francs (about $38 million). Because no public bids were tendered, open source organizations are now requesting a review of the decision.

The founder of btrfs talks about features, terabyte raid arrays and comparisons with ZFS.

Before Linux.com went dark late last year, it was one of the most visited open source news aggregation and discussion sites. In March, work got out that the Linux Foundation had taken Linux.com over, and was committed to making it bigger, better and richer than before. After months of effort (and some pretty impressive Web design work) the Linux Foundation delivered on that promise last night. The results are pretty cool, and different from anything else on the Web.

Learning from other people's code The reason I want this debugging feature so hard is that I like to learn from other people's code. The thing I like so much about running an open source OS, is that I can just read the sources for programs on my system and try to figure out what they do and how they do it .

Dell has announced a lower-cost version of its popular Mini 10 netbook, which runs Ubuntu Linux. The Dell Inspiron Mini 10v sells for $300, offering a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, 10-inch display, 120GB or 160GB hard drive, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam, the company says.

In a recent blog, Sun developer Malte Timmermann took a position on the security concerns of the Ecole Superieure d'Informatique, Electronique, Automatique (ESIEA) in Paris-Laval, France. The subject was the vulnerability of OpenOffice, involving document macros, for example.

What’s in a look? Before Apple started making immensely slick, sexy hardware, the main issues were always “specs”, “graphic cards”, “memory”. Then, the game changed. People started buying Apple computers because they looked good — inside and out. Their computers (and gadgets) are immensely appealing. Their operating system, OS X, is a pleasure to look at. When the iPhone was announced, I knew it was going to be the equivalent of Naomi Campbell in the cell phone world. And I was right. Are iPhones just too sexy to compete against them? Read the full story at Free Software Magazine.

From the 'yet another Linux news site?' files: Linux.com has been relaunched under the direction of the Linux Foundation. The Linux.com site was acquired by the Linux Foundation earlier this year from SourceForge for an an undisclosed sum. The goal of the site is supposed to be a community hub that lets the Linux community participate and contribute their knowledge, in the pursuit of being a Linux guru.

Over time, many people have complained about the X Window system; the X Window system, or Xorg in its current most popular implementation, is the layer between applications and the graphics adapter. It has some fantastic features (like the ability to run application over the network) and some shortcoming. One thing is sure: it has evolved over the last year or so, immensely, especially as far as 3D and hardware acceleration. In this article I will explain has X Window has changed, and what to expect in the near future. Several significant things happened, and they all depended on one another. But first, some background. Read the full story at Free Software Magazine.

Android is a complete operating environment based upon the Linux® V2.6 kernel. Initially, the deployment target for Android was the mobile-phone arena, including smart phones and lower-cost flip-phone devices. However, Android's full range of computing services and rich functional support have the potential to extend beyond the mobile-phone market. Android can be useful for other platforms and applications. In this article, get an introduction to the Android platform and learn how to code a basic Android application.

Anthony Rumble, one of Australia's long-time supporters of Linux and free software, died on the weekend. The announcement, made on the Sydney Linux Users Group mailing list, indicated that the death was sudden, caused by a regular household accident.

As Cloud Computing hits the mainstream, people are wondering: How mobile are my VMs?

I have been involved in a crusade, switching users at my workplace from Windows desktops to Ubuntu desktops, however, there have been a lot of complaints, and, people is requesting to go back to Windows, most of those complaints are regarding their office suite, and they are valid and justifiable complaints.

A collection of memorable - and generally funny - email signature quotes

Nobody really controls the Internet — untold numbers of servers located in hundreds of jurisdictions simply can't be policed by any one individual, organization, or government. What is controlled, however, is the assignment of IP addresses and domain names — a function that is carried out by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers through the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. That control is set to expire later this year, and ideas on who should take it from there are already beginning to circulate.

A relatively new product to hit the hardware scene is Pogoplug, which is a little device that can connect to a USB 2.0 hard drive and an Ethernet connection, and then instantly makes the drive an Internet-accessible storage device.

After long internal discussions, the Fedora Directory Server (FDS) developers have changed the name of their project to the 389 Directory Server (389DS). One of the main arguments for the name change is that the "Fedora" name, initially intended to be a generic brand for all of the Red Hat open source projects, turned out to be an obstacle preventing cooperation from other Linux distributions.

The universe of UNIX tools changes constantly. Here are 10 tools—some you may have overlooked and some new—to tinker with. Much like a vernacular, the universe of UNIX tools changes almost perpetually. New tools crop up frequently, while others are eternally modernized and adapted to suit emerging best practices. Certain tools are used commonly; others are used more infrequently. Some tools are perennial; occasionally, some are obsoleted outright. To speak UNIX fluently, you have to keep up with the "lingo."

The hard drive is the biggest speed bottleneck in any computer system. Linux has a number of tools for optimizing your hard drives and speeding up performance for different tasks. Paul Rubens shows us how.